Archives for: "May 2014, 19"

I really do not like MACROs in C and C++, at least the way they have been traditionally used starting with C. Many of these uses are antiquated because of better feature support with C++. The primary uses are inline function calls and constant declarations. With the possibility of MACRO instantiation side-effects, and all of the different ways a programmer can use a function, it is very difficult to write it correctly for all scenarios. And when a problem does occur, you cannot be certain what is being generated and compiled unless you look at the output from the preprocessor to determine if it is what you had intended.

However, there is still one use of MACROs, that I think makes them too valuable for the preprocessor to be removed altogether. This use is code generation in definitions. What I mean by that, is hiding cumbersome boiler-plate definitions that cannot easily be replicated without resorting to manual cut-and-paste editing. Cut-and-Paste is notorious for its likelihood of introducing bugs. I want to discuss some of the features that cannot be matched without the preprocessor, and set some guidelines that will help keep problems caused by preprocessor misuse to a minimum.